Exporting to Excel

[goofaholix]

I have a number of problems with Exporting Impromptu reports to Excel in Impromtu 7.1.

The show stopper is when I export with format the total fields in the report footer the totls often don't align with the columns they are totaled from. I've tried lining them up as exactly as I can in Impromptu, resizing them, etc, but the results are never what I expect. Is there any way to fix this?

The other problem is that when I export without format I get all of the interim calculation fields which aren't meant to be displayed in the report. If I remove them from the report then the displayed fields will not work anyomre I presume. Is there any fix for this?

The last isn't so serios but annoying. My shaded column headings sometimes export in the shaded colour, sometimes black and white, sometimes black text on black background. If necessary I can stop using shading, but the reports will be bland.

Thanks.

Bruce

 

[drlex]

Bruce,
I've had similar fun fettling Impromptu reports to enhance their readability in Excel. If the property of the item is set to right justified and aligned to the column(right-click on the item), I found that would solve the formatting issue 9 times out of 10.

A number of points I would make,
If you have an item in a group or report footer that is not visible (ie in white or outside the boundaries of the the footer box), it will still be exported and can affect any nearby items.

If you are looping a report in a macro for multiple exports, the formatting of items exported can get a little flakey in subsequent reports. I found it was best to close the report and impromptu in each loop to keep the true format.

If the report is required in Excel, better formatting can be done in a macro that automates Excel. In this way, reports can be titled in the header, have column headings repeated on pages, set to print in landscape mode etc. If you can set a macro in Excel, you can almost always duplicate it in CognosScript.

lex

PS the latest version of Impromptu has some Excel-export enhancements - a report over 16K lines will now use multiple sheets. I'm still using 7.1MR2 until the fit to page bug has been sorted, so I can't offer any more insights...

soi la, soi carre